Winter Trees Reflected in a Pond
William Henry Fox Talbot (British, 1800–1877)
1841–42
- Medium
- salted paper print from calotype negative
- Classification
- Photograph
- Dimensions
- Image: 16.4 x 19.1 cm (6 7/16 x 7 1/2 in.); Paper: 19.8 x 24.8 cm (7 13/16 x 9 3/4 in.); Matted: 40.6 x 50.8 cm (16 x 20 in.)
- Culture
- England, 19th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Photography
- Credit line
- Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Kids profiles and older: it shows nature, places, still life or a children's book. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Talbot captured tree branches flawlessly mirrored on the glassy surface of the pond at his family seat, the 13th-century Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire. A longer exposure, or a lusher season, would have risked a blurred image. The result was a radically abstract composition for its time—a starkly beautiful landscape, as expressive and personal as any painting.
